Some 80% of Roma surveyed live below their country’s at-risk-of-poverty threshold; every third Roma lives in housing without tap water; every third Roma child lives in a household where someone went to bed hungry at least once in the previous month; and 50% of Roma between the ages of six and 24 do not attend school. This report underscores an unsettling but unavoidable reality: the European Union’s largest ethnic minority continues to face intolerable discrimination and unequal access to vital services.

Data included in the Roma report concerning the sections on paid work, housing and participation in education are updated in FRA’s data explorer and the EU-MIDIS II main results report after reassessment of weights and definitions used.

Highlighting persisting barriers to employment, education, housing and health services, this report also reveals that four out of 10 Roma surveyed felt discriminated against at least once in the past five years – yet only a fraction pursued the incident. While sobering, this report presents vital information that can serve as a unique resource for policymakers committed to ensuring that Roma are treated equally with respect to their fundamental rights.

The report is based on a survey that collected information on almost 34,000 persons living in Roma households in nine European Union (EU) Member States, derived from nearly 8,000 face-to-face interviews with Roma. It presents a selection of results from FRA’s Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EU-MIDIS II), which surveyed around 26,000 people with immigrant or ethnic minority background living in the EU. The European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey is a major part of the agency’s commitment to collecting and publishing data on groups not covered in general population surveys. It is the third survey of the agency to focus on Roma.